Authors' objectives: Many women are overweight or obese from the start of pregnancy and this puts the mother s and baby s health at risk. If a woman is overweight or obese in pregnancy she is at greater risk of developing gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia. She is also more likely to need a caesarean section and there is a greater risk of stillbirth and infant death. As well as starting pregnancy too heavy, some women gain too much weight during pregnancy. Many women struggle to lose weight after pregnancy and at the moment we don t know enough about how to help them. The period when women have a baby is a very unique time. On the one hand, it may be a time when women become very aware of the importance of good health and so might be open to changing their diet or becoming more active. On the other hand, women s lives change completely. Their attention becomes focused on caring for the baby rather than themselves. This means that any support provided to women to help them lose weight after pregnancy needs to fit in with their busy and constantly changing lives. Some schemes have been set up for women to help them lose weight after pregnancy but most of these have involved women going to scheduled classes or group meetings. Although many women signed up for the sessions, women struggled to attend because of the demands of looking after the baby and other family members. Based on these approaches which have not worked so well, we have thought about other ways to help women after they have a baby, providing support in a flexible, non-intrusive way and so that women don t have to be at a particular place at a particular time. Nearly everyone has a mobile phone and most people use it to send and receive text messages. Text messages have been used to help people stop smoking and some research has shown that they may also help people to lose weight. In the study we propose we could like to test a weight management programme delivered via text messages to help women lose weight after pregnancy. Our idea is that women would have easy access to support and the information received would be tailored to their needs. For example, if late night eating is a particular trigger for a women, she would receive supportive messages at this time of the day to encourage a change in this habit. We plan to work closely with women to develop the text messaging service as we want to make sure the messages are clear and easy to understand. Importantly, as well as helping women to lose weight, the text messaging service would also be used to help women keep the weight off. Sometimes this important part of weight management is overlooked but it may be the hardest part. We will invite women who are overweight or obese after pregnancy to take part in a pilot study (this means an small scale trial). Women would be assigned by chance to either receive weight management messages or to receive general messages about child health and development for one year. Researchers would visit the women in their home, or in a research centre (based on their preference), every 3 months to collect measurements like weight and waist circumference and to complete questionnaires. Women would receive a token of appreciation for their time commitment. This trial would tell us if our approach is acceptable to women and so would be worth trialling on a larger scale. If successful, this work could result in a weight management intervention that is made widely available to postpartum women.

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/phr/146720

Year Published: 2020

URL for published report: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/phr/146720

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: England, United Kingdom

Organisation Name: NIHR Public Health Research programme

Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK

Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

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